


141. nine lives

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [213]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 14:49:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9496814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: They were supposed to share them.





	

**Author's Note:**

> [warning: canon violence, drowning]

They were supposed to share them.

\--

Sarah knows, even if she wishes that she didn’t. She doesn’t like remembering. Remembering is being nine years old again, sinking down towards the bottom of the lake, kicking but knowing she is not kicking enough. The way the world moves farther and farther way until it’s

 

(tick tick boom)

 

back again. Arms pull her out of the water. _I died_ , Sarah tells Mrs. S, unafraid and certain. _I died down there._

 _You’re alright, love,_ Siobhan says, sobbing. _You’re alright._

Well, of course she is. That’s not the point.

\--

Helena loses the next three lives like candy wrappers behind her, carelessly discarded; one in a basement, one in a hotel room, one in a dingy house flickering with fluorescent lights. She tells Maggie, very calmly, that she is a miracle. Maggie does not believe her, but agrees with her anyways.

 _Enhanced healing factor_ , Maggie says to Tomas. Tomas says nothing; doesn’t understand, or doesn’t want to. Helena doesn’t say anything either but that’s because she is pressing her fingers to her brand-new scar, over and over again.

\--

It’s when Helena finds her again, after the rebar, that Sarah knows. Even if she wishes she didn’t.

She drums her fingers on the steering wheel as they drive to the diner. “How,” she says, and then stops. Helena’s focus on her is like a spotlight – no, like staring directly into a spotlight. Which is to say: it burns and Sarah wishes it would stop.

Helena doesn’t say anything. Sarah isn’t even sure she’s blinking. “How,” Sarah says again, and then manages to finish it: “many times have you died.”

“I do not die,” Helena says with perfect confidence.

“Yeah, I know,” Sarah says. “But how many times.”

\--

The story is the story. Sarah shoots her anyways.

(tick tick—)

\--

Helena wakes up

(—boom)

in a hospital bed and gasps _sestra_ and means _I get it, I figured it out_. She wants to find Sarah and tell her _five times, now_. More than this, she wants to know how many times Sarah has died. For Sarah the deaths are like a lake; for Helena they are like waking up to a bright room with a brand-new scar that she gets to touch.

Sarah thinks about the dying. Helena thinks about the waking up afterwards.

They were supposed to _share_ this. These lives. Their lives. It was all supposed to be shared, but in the womb things were ruined and now they are here. Away from a hospital room, somewhere, Sarah is looking out a window shaking – not enough to notice, really, but enough that she knows she’s afraid. Helena had never answered her. How many times? Four? Six? Nine? Was that the ninth?

Is Helena going to come back?

\--

Helena comes back, and Sarah loses her, and Sarah comes back, and Helena loses her, and now here they are: in two separate tangles of trees. One of them is dying, but in a few minutes they might both be the same again.

In her hut Helena warms her hands over the fire. In the dark cold of Rachel’s woods Sarah doesn’t warm her hands over anything. She’s tried standing, but she can’t anymore. She closes her eyes and leans her head back against a tree trunk and counts the seconds, tick-tick-tick. She is counting other things too. Drowning, that’s one. The rebar is two, the gunshot is three. Did Helena get shot at on her way out of the Castor camp? Is there a reason Sarah survived that fever?

She shouldn’t have shot Helena. She should have aimed for the leg, or something, or something to keep her from frantically tallying deaths with her mind half-dead from cold.

Sarah is going to die in these woods. That’s a fact. The thing in doubt is whether or not she will keep going afterwards.

Her brain is slowing down; the blood pumping from her leg gets more and more sluggish. Sarah closes her eyes, tick tick, and waits to

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


End file.
